Charles Arbuthnot (14 March 1767 –18 August 1850) was a British diplomat and Tory politician. He was Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire between 1804 and 1807 and held a number of political offices. He was a good friend of the Duke of Wellington. His second wife,Harriet,became a hostess at Wellington's society dinners,and wrote an important diary cataloging contemporary political intrigues.
Appointed on 6 June 1804 as Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire,Arbuthnot was the first ambassador in Constantinople under a new arrangement,whereby the Levant Company provided a consul-general,in this case Isaac Morier,who saw to commercial work.[6] In 1806 Arbuthnot negotiated a trade treaty with the Reis ül-Küttab,Ahmed Vâsıf.[7] He travelled out with William Pole-Tylney,nephew to Arthur and Richard Wellesley.[8]
Arbuthnot was tasked in the early days of 1807 to bring Selim III into the Anglo-Russian camp opposed to France. He was unable to do that.[3] In the context of a renewed Russo-Turkish War and tariff evasion under the commercial treaty,Arbuthnot pursued his own line,prepared to use force.[9]
Arbuthnot was Member of Parliament for Eye between 1809 and 1812,taking up the seat when Henry Wellesley resigned.[10] He became Secretary to the Treasury in 1809,and began attempts to manage public opinion for the government,by centralising management of the press.[11]
Arbuthnot held the position of Patronage Secretary,and also played the role of "general cabinet fixer".[14] In September 1812,John McMahon,private secretary to the Prince Regent,tried Arbuthnot in an attempt to shut down a series of scurrilous articles in the Morning Chronicle. They purported to be an epic and extended review of a poem by Charlotte Dacre on the Prince and his circle,and referenced the Prince's affair with the Marchioness of Hertford. These squibs have been attributed by David V. Erdman to Lord Byron.[15] Liverpool disapproved of the subsidy Arbuthnot was giving Lewis Goldsmith,founder of The Anti-Gallican Monitor,a project of 1811 of Arbuthnot and John Charles Herries;and ran it down,ending it in 1814.[16]
During Arbuthnot's time in charge of patronage,a Treasury appointment,over 2,000 sinecure posts were abolished. He noted the effect the reforms were having on his influence on Members of Parliament.[17] He is taken to have been the de facto Tory whip.[18] The responsibility for party discipline was only later recognised by a seat in the Cabinet.
During the last years of Arbuthnot's life,after the death of his second wife Harriet,he turned over the family home to his eldest son,and moved into the Duke of Wellington's London residence,Apsley House,as his confidential friend.[23] Their story is told in Wellington and the Arbuthnots by E. A. Smith.[24]
Charles Arbuthnot died at Apsley House in August 1850,aged 83. Spiridione Gambardella's portrait of him is kept there.[25] He was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery.[26]
Works
The Correspondence of Charles Arbuthnot (1941),edited by Arthur Aspinall[27]
Personal life and family
Engraved portrait of Marcia Clapcott-Lisle (1774–1806),first wife of Charles Arbuthnot
Arbuthnot married a second time on 31 January 1814 at Fulbeck,Lincolnshire,to Harriet Fane (1793–1834),daughter of the Hon. Henry Fane. Harriet was fascinated by politics. During her marriage to Arbuthnot,she became a hostess at society dinners given by Arbuthnot's good friend,the Duke of Wellington. Smith rejects the suggestion that Harriet was Wellington's mistress. Her diaries were published as The Journal of Mrs Arbuthnot in 1950.[28]
With his first wife Marcia,Arbuthnot's children were:
Arbuthnot had an illegitimate son,from the days before he first married,mentioned in correspondence with his clerical friend John Sneyd (1763–1835),brother of Walter Sneyd. These letters discuss also his nickname "Gosh",which spread from his familiar circle to being generally used,and mistaken for his surname;and his interest in John de Mainauduc,Irish-Huguenot practitioner of animal magnetism.[32] Of Arthur Paget,Arbuthnot's replacement in 1807 at Constantinople,George Canning as incoming Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the second Portland administration wrote "I must send him to repair if possible the mischief poor Gosh has been doing there."[33]
Harriet Fane (1793–1834),second wife of Charles Arbuthnot,portrait by John Hoppner,now in the Foundation Lazzaro Galdiano,Madrid
↑"THE IRON DUKE'S LADY". Heritage Alive UK. Retrieved 23 May 2020. By January 1835, Charles handed his estate at Woodford to his son, and followed the diaries to Aspley House. He and Wellington lived there together, surrounded by the legacy of Harriet's influence, until Charles died in 1850.
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